Pages

Close Call Sports objectively tracks and analyzes close and controversial calls in sport, with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game. Developed from The Left Field Corner's MLB Umpire Ejection Fantasy League (UEFL), baseball's number one source for umpire ejections, video instant replay reviews and their corresponding calls, with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game.

-cc denotes Crew Chief, * denotes first Post-season assignment. Per UEFL Rule 4-3-c, all umpires selected to appear in the Wild Card games shall receive one bonus point for this appearance. Umpires assigned to the Division Series shall receive two bonus points for this appearance; crew chiefs shall receive one additional bonus point for this role (two or three points total).

24
comments
:

If we assume that the Wild Card crews will work the LCSes again, it's absurd to see some very good umpires (Jim Wolf, Jeff Nelson, and Alfonso Marquez are 3) sitting on the sidelines, while some of the league's very worst— CB Bucknor, Rob Drake, and the perpetually overrated Dale Scott have playoff assignments.

-Why is Kellogg the plate umpire tonight instead of Welke?-If West & Davis are crew chiefs for the wild card games, is it safe to say they get the CC spots in the LCSes too?-How come the Dodgers/Braves crew has only 5 umpires?-Based on what we know now, who does everyone think will work the WS?-WHERE IS BRIAN GORMAN?

This is my major complaint. Between the call last week, and his usual awful plate work, it appears as though performance isn't the key to evaluation. Similarly, I remember Dale Scott blowing no less than 3-4 calls on the bases in Phillies games alone this year. I really wonder how much either favoritism or Questec scores are valued over work on the bases in making these assignments.

Two umpires who are working the wild card game are working their first playoff series (Knight and Barksdale). My guess is that MLB has changed the way they pick umpires for the wild card and will replace them with more experienced umpires (Marquez, Nelson or Kellogg) in the Championship series. Also, pretty sure that neither Gorman or Wolf were eligible for the playoffs since they worked well under 100 games. Cederstrom might have been eliminated also as I believe he worked about 99 games.

So have the announcers, who just complained about Kellogg expanding the zone too much for the Rays while their pitch tracker showed both pitches they were discussing as strikes. Nice to know national announcers are as bad as team announcers.

So you're basically arguing that announcers, fans, writers, AND players know nothing about umpiring and only the completely non-transparent process by which umpires are evaluated is correct? C'mon that's a total joke. Next thing I know you'll claim that the failed barehanded tag last week when the pitcher had the ball in the other hand was really an out just because CB said so.

It has been demonstrated in the past that announcers and players don't necessarily understand the basic rules in the game, and it is difficult to judge an umpire's ability to make the right call if you aren't aware of what the right call is. If you want to decide how good or bad an umpire is you should do so by observing objective data.

I agree with you completely on balls and strikes, but the vast majority of plays where they complain are those where replay shows the umpires to have been in error (like the call just blown in the Rangers-Rays game). All I'm questioning is whether MLB has any sort of objective data on anything other than balls and strikes, and if they don't, whether the playoff assignments are skewed to guys who have good QuesTec scores , but who may make a lot of mistakes on the bases. Remember, if MLB was simply more transparent, they could correct these misconceptions.

Say CB is actually an excellent umpire by the metrics measured by MLB, they could save themselves a lot of headaches by releasing that data. Especially when you get wild swings in playoff assignments. All we know is the rules about not working consecutive series or consecutive World Series.

Didn't Joe West miss a substantial portion of the season as well? Yet, he's out there. Also, it seems silly to keep a guy out of the playoffs if he's having a great year because he missed a few months early in the season. Wolf has been back since July, Gorman since June, I believe.

I'm sure they have evaluators watching the whole crew, but it would indeed be interesting to see some of the data on them.

If you're talking about the trap no-call the LF Umpire must have blinked and missed it because I saw that as a trap in full speed from the initial TV angle and the umpire certainly had a much better look at it than that.

I also found it idiotic that the announcers are griping about the strike zone when the pitch tracker showed both pitches were in the strike zone. Not just touching the zone completely IN the zone. Baseball announcers are idiots for the most part. There are a few good ones but not many. It seemed obvious to me this announcing crew were pulling for the rays based on their comments. Kellogg did a great job behind the plate. And the numbers put out on here clearly show that.